Language Journeys: A Customer Perspective

We here at Mercy Ships have used your French lessons to prepare our team leaders for traveling to war torn African nations. The violence in Africa requires us to quickly change our planned destinations for safer ones. This short time frame means that we must train our volunteer crew to learn new languages rather than waiting for appropriately skilled crew to volunteer their services for a year or more.

As we looked at the next 3 years, we saw our hospital ship and its 400 crew serving in French speaking African countries, with only 2-3 French speaking crew. We are a volunteer organization where every one from the doctors, nurses, marine officers, cook and teachers works for free. Some volunteer for a month while others have been with us for over 20 years; but in the end, we all work for free and even pay to live onboard the ship. These paying volunteers allow us to keep our operating costs down so that we can perform more free surgeries, but it limits our ability to get language specific skills. Your product has allowed us to build new skill sets within our volunteers and our organization.

Rosetta Stone’s unique learning methodology has allowed our crew from 32 nations to quickly learn new languages to allow us to bring life saving surgeries and developmental programs to some of the forgotten poor of this world. We face so many challenges as we go to serve in these countries, differences in language, culture, beliefs, customs and education. However, none of these obstacle can be dealt with until we can transcend the language barrier. Your product’s ability to quickly master basic conversation allows us to move on to the other barriers to help these people as much as possible.

My role is to visit these countries 12-18 months ahead of time to assess their needs and develop strategic partners within the country. Rosetta Stone has greatly facilitated my ability to converse with the government leadership and other humanitarian organizations serving in these countries. I will soon be using your Arabic product to better help me work with Islamic clerics as we seek to bring hope and healing to their people. Thank you for your product, it has allowed us to better serve these desperate people.
Please check our website at www.mercyships.org to find more information on what your product is facilitating. Thank you again on behalf of Mercy Ships and the poor of Africa.

— Mark

Tyler, Texas

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IMHO this is further validation for “niche” Rosetta Stone language products — such as EMT, First-Responder, and Disaster Relief content — which might also be most effectively delivered as a mobile/tablet software product. 🙂